UK Parliament / Open data

Health and Social Care

Proceeding contribution from Andy Burnham (Labour) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 2 June 2015. It occurred during Queen's speech debate on Health and Social Care.

That is exactly the point. When we are in a crisis like this, short-term, kneejerk cuts are made, which make the situation wrong in the long term.

When I raised these deficits in the election campaign, the Secretary of State said I was scaremongering, but just two weeks after the election the truth emerged. [Interruption.] He says I was, but we now know the truth. There was an £822 million deficit in the NHS last year, a sevenfold increase on the previous year. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says he is dealing with it. That is not good enough. That is appalling mismanagement of the NHS. Financial grip in the NHS has been surrendered on this Secretary of State’s watch, and things are looking even worse this year. Far from scaremongering, these issues are real and should have been debated at the last election. The NHS is now facing a £2 billion deficit this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said earlier, that will mean cuts to beds, to staff and to services.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
596 c468 
Session
2015-16
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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